My son Aaron has always loved apple cider so I was not surprised when he purchased a 125 year-old cider press several years ago. The cider press, still in its original condition, is both beautiful and practical. Although Aaron bought it to make himself hard cider, which is similar to an apple wine, my daughter-in-law, Renee, saw the potential for a new family tradition, and so the Annual Deck Family Apple Festival was born. Continue reading
Several years ago I had the pleasure of visiting Kanapaha Botanical Gardens in Gainesville, Florida. It’s a beautiful botanical garden with a mile and a half walk through various gorgeous exhibits, but the thing that caught my eye, the one thing I could not get out of my mind, was a bottle tree. The bottle tree was made out of the large stump of a tree that had long ago died. The bottles were mounted on pieces of rebar that had been placed into holes drilled into the old stump. Continue reading
Splendippity 